Alexa Meilhac How I Got My Passion for Writing I loathed my elementary school years with a great burning passion.

This was mostly because the staff at my first school did not care about the students and their varying learning styles. Then a few years later, we moved from Charlotte to Concord, so I could attend a better school. At my second school the staff was nicer to the students and cared about learning style. The only problem was that they would not let me write my own notes, because I could not keep up with the rest of the class so the teachers or their assistants would write them for me during recess. They would hand them to me after class hoping that I would understand what we had talked about that day. I never understood what we talked about in class, because I paid attention since I never wrote my own notes. Finally I graduated and had a break for the summer and that was when I began writing on my own. During the summer after elementary school, I spent most of my time in my room reading, but soon that became boring and I got a pencil and piece of paper. For the first few weeks I would give up, because I could not think of an idea to write about. Finally, near the end of summer break I would start to write one sentence stories that later became two sentence stories. Unfortunately, I had to start middle school and I stopped writing until school was over. When summer break finally came my writing became an obsession. Shortly after the summer break began, I had stayed at a friends house for a day. We got bored after her other friend had to go home, so we broke out the pens and paper. She drew pictures while I wrote a story. It was about five pages long when my mom came to pick me up and take me home. Unfortunately, a week later I was cleaning my room and I misplaced it, so I

never got to finish it that summer. A few weeks later high school began, so I took a tiny bit of a break from writing. This break was not as long compared to the other hiatuses I had taken in the past. It was only a couple weeks later during the weekend that I began to write again. During that weekend, I was bored so I began to write on the computer. At the end of the weekend I had managed to write a couple of pages. I immediately dropped that story, because I had to write papers for the rest of my first semester. The next semester, I was being bullied by a guy in my math class, so I started to write again. This time around, my stories contained darker material. I made the mistake of writing during my free time in class one day. When I went off to the restroom, I left my notebook on top of my desk and when I came back it was missing. I confronted the bully and he acted like he did not where it was. After class I went to the teacher and he said that there was nothing he could do. I went home and cried, because I had almost finished my story and now it was all gone. By the end of my freshman year, I never got my writing notebook back. For the rest of my high school education, I only read books during my breaks. I also limited myself to only writing at home and not showing my writing to anyone, but my mother. Of course, unless it was a paper I had to write for school. During my junior year, my maternal grandfather died and I once again began writing darker material. My last year of high school, I graduated a semester early so I had six months of free time on my hands. For the first three months, I tried to get a job for the first half of my break and played video games when I was not preparing for an interview. The fourth and fifth months, I continued playing video games, but I also wrote some. During the final month, I decided to give college and/or university a try. I tried applying to a couple of the universities on the top of my list, but got rejection letters, because I had a low SAT score. Then I applied at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, because the South Campus is closer to my home and I cannot drive yet. I

did get an acceptance letter. After taking the required testing, I signed up for classes and wrote a lot leading up to my first week. By the time my first week of college came around, I had seventeen or more stories laying around waiting to be finished. My first semester went by without a hitch since it was developmental classes. During that semester for my English 095 class I wrote a paper on my writing process and I made a great grade on it! I also did a presentation on how to notice a Mary Sue and Gary Stu character that got me a one hundred! I only made a C for the class, because I had to miss my classes for personal reasons. The next semester, I did not have any English courses and continued to write in private. It was during this time that I met my boyfriend and came out of my shell with my writing. My stories became brighter and happy again due to how he made me feel; he still makes me feel this way. I also began throwing him my ideas and bits of my stories, so he could edit my work and give me comments on how he felt about it. Now, Im in my third semester at school and in another English class. Hopefully, I will continue to grow and flourish as a writer as well as a person. All in all I believe that all of these events have had an effect on my linguistic literacy. Most of the connections with my writing have to deal with how I felt at the time. For example, in the second paragraph, I was determined to prove that I could write by myself. I hope to grow and flourish by being more open about sharing my work with others besides the people close to me. I view writing as an outlet for my feelings or to at least project what I am feeling. I perceive learning as a way to expand my horizons and subjects to write about.